Dreamcatcher
by Pandorama
Summary: Luka/Abby. You could definitely call it AU. "My name, Luka. What’s my name?”
1. Nightmares

She does not want him to sleep tonight. All too well, she knows what the night will bring them, because now it is _them_ and not simply him that suffers the nightmares. She, too, knows them, because she will wake as he moans in his sleep, cries out, and it will be she who will lie with him as he shakes, stroking his arm, whispering to him, holding him until the fear fades back into the recesses of darkness. They are less frequent, now, but they still come, and when they do, she aches immensely for him.

Tonight, she knows, the nightmares will come with a vengeance. Eighteen years ago on this night came the first, and they both know that his ghosts will come to remind him on this most painful of anniversaries.

She lets sleep come, knowing it will not last, but exhausted. In loving him, she now carries his demons as well, and they are heavy. She allows her eyes to close, his arms hugging her close to his warmth, and she drifts off to await the inevitable.

* * *

When she wakes, the rays of morning startle her. The nightmares have not come, because, surely, she would have woken up. She glances down to confirm that his arms still wrap around her, and smiles to see not only his arms around her, but a the small arms of a child tangled among the sheets as well, the covers nearly engulfing him. So they have survived the night. She pulls his arm more tightly around her waist and drifts off, once again.

When she wakes again, it is to the sounds of clattering dishes and shouts. She buries her nose in the pillow and inhales, the soft scent of clean hair lingering from where he's slept. She glances to the clock.

There is no clock.

There is no nightstand.

There is a wooden floor and an antique dresser and a large, oak trunk that stands in the corner.

This is not her house.

She stifles a scream as she looks wildly about, scanning for anything familiar. There is nothing. Nothing she knows, nothing she's ever seen before. And yet she can smell him everywhere._ He_ has been here, wherever here is. She tries to call out for him, voice failing her.

More shouts echo from somewhere in the house, and then his voice. She knows his voice. She runs towards it, blindly, heart racing in her chest. Down a hall she's never seen. Into a kitchen she does not know. And there he stands, at a stove she doesn't own.

With two children.

Two children that are not hers.

Had the child in the bed…? No, that had been Joe. It had been her son. She is sure of this, that the child had been her flesh.

"Mama!" One of the children, a girl, turns to face her, face bright and she comes towards Abby with open arms. Abby backs away, breathing hard, flattening herself to the wall. The girl stops. "Mama, what's wrong?"

"I…" Abby draws in a sharp breath.

It isn't right. This isn't right. She is dreaming.

The child is calling her "Mama."

The child whose dark eyes and curls she knows from the photo, even faded as it is. She knows this child.

Jasna.

Turning, she dashes down the hallway once again, to the bed where she'd woken up, looking around for anything that might wake her from this nightmare.

She is in his nightmare.

She sinks to the floor, head spinning. Bile rises in her throat. She needs desperately to wake up. The dream – the nightmare – is too real.

Footsteps precede his appearance, but she knows them as well as she knows anything. Luka frowns at her from the doorway. "What's wrong?"

She looks at him with fear in her eyes, scrambling back against the bed. She wants to touch him, but she is afraid.

He inspects her again, as he does when she is awake, when she doesn't feel well. She doesn't feel well, now.

"Tell me what's wrong."

She shakes her head, unsure of her voice. "Luka?"

"I'm right here. What's wrong?"

"I…I'm not awake."

He shakes his head slowly. "You are. You're awake. You're having a panic attack, I think. Just breathe with me, just like we did with Marko."

With Marko.

The bile rises again. "No…no, he's Joe, Luka. Joe."

"Who is Joe?"

She swallows and then she understands. Her voice wavers dangerously. "Who am I, Luka?"

His brows knit together. "My wife. You're my wife."

She shakes her head. "No. My name, Luka. What's my name?"

"Danijela. Your name is Danijela."

Everything is black now.


	2. Sleeping

She feels the clouds settle, but does not want to open her eyes. She is not ready. If this is a dream, it is also a nightmare. If it is not, she would prefer not to know. His voice echoes somewhere in the near distance, drawing her from the depths. Her breathing quickens. He is calling for Danijela.

Her eyes flutter open against her will. She studies him. He is not the man she knows. He is a different version of himself, and she knows in an instant why. The girl is cross-legged on the bed, next to her, eyes wide. His eyes. Smaller and darker, but his. Intense and ambiguous and enigmatic. She loves his eyes. Jasna's eyes. A lower lip quivers and she instantly feels a wave of maternal instinct wash over her, and she smiles without meaning to. The girl responds by curling onto the bed, against her. She fits perfectly against her mother's side.

Abby is her mother. Danijela.

She is Danijela.

"Where am I?" She is not aware that she is speaking until she's said it.

His hand caresses her face, and it's eerily familiar. "At home. In bed."

Her voice trembles. "Vukovar."

"Yes."

She closes her eyes again, unconsciously stroking Jasna's back as she does with Joe. It comforts her. "The siege."

His voice hushes and he places a hand over Jasna's face. Shielding her. "Yes."

Only now does she realize the little hand gripping hers. She's never seen him, but she knows. She knows how old he was when he died, too, and it churns her stomach. Joe's age. Marko is Joe's age, almost exactly. Sticky baby fingers, wrapped around two of hers, as he peers at her over the mattress.

Her heart aches. She doesn't know how Luka looks at Joe without remembering. He's darker, his features sharper, but god, he looks like Joe. His lower lip juts out questioningly, and she feels for him what she felt for Jasna. They are not her children, and yet they are. She cannot help herself but to love them.

She is Danijela.

Luka's fingers are on her throat, checking her pulse. She wants to tell him that it's fine, but then, she's not a doctor. It occurs to her that she has no idea what her profession is. Does she have a profession? Did she go to college? She's never asked any of these things. She has no idea of anything.

Her eyes go to Jasna, and again, she is calm. The girl is somehow grounding to her, and she cannot help but wonder if it is because she does not have to think of her as someone else. Luka is not the husband she knows, Marko is not the son she carried, but Jasna – Jasna is simply Jasna. And for some unfathomable reason, she loves this child. A wave of raw emotion goes through her.

She will lose Jasna.

She will lose herself.

This is Vukovar, and there is a siege. She turns to Luka, who sits worriedly by her side, Marko leaning on his knee. "What day is it?"

"Subota."

It feels as though someone inflated a balloon inside her head. Her ears ring. "What?"

"I said, Saturday."

"Saturday," she repeats. She says it again, and listens carefully.

She has spoken Croatian. He has spoken it to her, and she has understood. Some connection in her mind has heard Croatian and understood English, thought in English and spoken Croatian.

She reminds herself that this is a dream. A nightmare.

"Mama." Jasna is looking at her, in a perfect mirror of Luka, brow furrowed, eyes swimming with at least a dozen emotions. "Are you awake now?"

She fights off the urge to answer that no, she is far from it, but again a wave of maternal instinct takes hold and she strokes the girl's soft curls and nods.

"You had a panic attack," Luka murmurs, and now she sees into him, the same man she knows.

He's wrong, but she nods all the same. She has no way out of this nightmare, and for now, she plays along.

"I'll make some tea. Jasna, come and help me." He rises, hoists Marko on his shoulder, and extends a hand to his daughter.

Their daughter.

She is Danijela.

Alone, she eases up from the bed. She inexplicably knows her way around this place.

Nightmares do not make sense. She reminds herself of this once more.

A mirror is in the bathroom, and she closes her eyes to avoid the answer as she stands before it. She is not ready.

As she breathes, she wonders if what she sees will matter. It's a dream either way. A nightmare.

The more she stands breathing in and out, the more she wonders if this is not, in truth, a dream. Perhaps it is a blessing, albeit terrifying, to meet these people. But then, she's constructed them in her mind, hasn't she? She's created these people out of Luka's memories and a single photo. And that would mean…

She opens her eyes to see a face she recognizes. Nearly identical to the photo, perhaps a bit more fatigued, hair a little disheveled about her face, but Danijela's.

She is Danijela.

She studies herself closely. A cross dangles around her neck, and for the first time she notes the well-worn nightgown hanging loosely over her body. She grimaces at the sight, her own taste still lingering within.

She is Abby, as well.

The ring on her finger bears a miniscule diamond. She smiles at this, remembering Luka's chagrin when he told her – told Abby – how hard he'd worked to save for even the smallest of diamonds.

He'd not had to struggle quite so much for the one she wore in the waking hours, a full carat proffered under the stars and snow for the marking of a private anniversary. It would dwarf this even further, and a sudden sense of jealousy at the comparative meaning stabs at her. This, this minute stone on her finger now, weighs more heavily, somehow.

And suddenly, she needs him. Needs his arms around her, whoever she might be.

Whomever it is that he loves, she wants it to be her.


	3. Dreaming

The floorboards creak underfoot as she makes her way, barefoot, down the hallway. She pauses by a doorway on one side and twists open the handle to reveal a room that she knows belongs to Jasna without having to pause to consider how. She rests on the jamb as she has done a thousand times watching Joe sleep. It's unsettling to her, the pink, ruffled bedding and heap of stuffed animals and wiry vanity for a child to gaze in and pretend she is older.

Jasna will die a child.

She prays she will wake before that happens.

She walks lightly, aware that she is treading on the image of a gravesite not to be disrupted. Her fingers dance along the edge of the bedspread and over the vanity, wondering at it all. A little girl alive in the kitchen sits here and brushes her hair, glosses her lips with the used nubs of lipstick gathered from her mother's countertop and the depths of her grandmother's purse. She prances around in high heels far too big for her with a tablecloth on her head, marrying her teddy bear as her dolls look on. She whirls around in long skirts fashioned from curtains under the spotlight of the New York City Ballet in her own bedroom.

Abby remembers these things from Danijela's eyes, knows them from Danijela's mind.

But in truth, she doesn't remember anything. She doesn't know anything about this girl.

It is only a dream.

Carefully, she leans on the bed and lays her head on Jasna's pillow, breathing in deeply. She does this most mornings, after Luka vacates his side of the bed. It gives her comfort. This, too, comforts her.

It is familiar.

It is only a dream.

She runs a hand over the pillow, smoothing out the wrinkles, and leaves with a last, wistful look at the entombed memory.

In the kitchen, Luka juggles Marko and a teakettle while Jasna swings her legs from the countertop, watching him intently with a gaze of pure reverence.

She has seen him do the same with Joe, and wonders for the first time what it would have been like to have a daughter.

Joe will never have another sister than Jasna. She's mourned the loss of possibility on many occasions, most of them alone, in the dark, unwilling to admit her perceived failure to Luka. She blames herself for taking the chance away from him. Seeing the way Jasna looks at him is palpably painful. She's taken that from him.

She slides her arms around Luka's waist from behind, and he tenses slightly. She wonders if Danijela has ever done this before. But then, it doesn't matter.

It's only a dream.

He turns and regards her, giving a small nod of satisfaction before dumping a squirming Marko into her arms. She nuzzles his soft neck, again lost in the feeling of loving these children.

She told him once that she loved them through him.

She didn't expect it to ache so much.

Marko leans back in her arms and grins, his smile all Luka. "Mama." He's reassuring her.

She is Danijela.

She is his mother.

"Here." Luka sets a cup of tea on the counter. The cup is warm ivory porcelain with pink roses. Danijela's taste, again.

They don't have teacups at home. Only monochromatic mugs.

She is nothing like Danijela. And yet Luka loves her.

He loves Abby.

Sometimes, she's not sure she deserves his love.

Marko fits easily on her hip, no heavier than Joe. She sips the tea slowly, not expecting the bitter flavor. She's beginning to wonder how much a dream this is. She's had vivid dreams before, but nothing like this. Nothing so powerful as this.

Marko wiggles against her, impatient to be let down, and she gently lowers him to the floor with a maternal smile that comes easily. He scampers to a kitchen chair to retrieve a raggedy grey and white stuffed rabbit that's been loved to within an inch of its life. Her mind flashes on Joe's frog and its many escapades. Marko sits on the floor, rabbit in hand, and sets about staging a muttered conversation with his toy.

Joe does the same thing with his frog. And with any toy that will engage him.

She aches to hold him in her arms again.

Instead, she sets the cup on the counter and winds her arms around Luka's waist, leaning into him. He does not flinch this time, but kisses her head softly, stroking her back absently. She can sense his anticipation, and suspects it has something to do with Vukovar. With the siege.

She can't recall much about the siege, other than fragments of shared memories and what she's read on her own. She doesn't know what day it is now, or what day it was when they died.

She doesn't want to know.

She doesn't want to die.

She doesn't want to watch them die.

And suddenly, she feels a shift. The haze lifts.

It isn't a dream, any longer.

She pulls away from Luka, a cold wave rushing over her. It feels as though someone has shocked her from within and she feels bile rise in her throat, but she fights it down. Luka's face contorts in concern as she pales, hands shaking visibly as she grips the counter.

"Danijela?"

His hand is warm against her cheek. Real, emanating warmth.

She doesn't have to die.

Jasna doesn't have to die.

Marko doesn't have to die.

And Joe would never have lived.

She would never have loved Luka.

She has the choice, now. This isn't her life, and she knows it. But it isn't a dream, either. It's something foreign and unnatural, but it's her reality at the present. It's as real as the acid crawling up her throat, the warmth of his hand caressing her skin, the concern pouring from his eyes.

She can save his family and spare him the heartache, and sacrifice her love for him and her son.

Or she can let them die and let his nightmares live on, selfishly, and love him and their son.

She has the choice.


	4. Perceiving

She holds onto his voice as her head swims. He's speaking to her, to Danijela, and it's all she can do to keep breathing, in and out, in and out. He's asking her a question, but all she can hear is the resonation of his voice in her veins as her pulse rushes in her ears. She fights for control. She needs to be here, to grasp this newfound reality.

She has a choice to make.

This is not a dream.

His voice comes through the haze, reaching her through the fragments of thought that engulf her in a cloud. Resonating. Telling Jasna to take her brother out of the room. She springs back to life, to reality. "No."

Luka blinks, trying to understand her logic. "Danijela?"

"No." She's firmer. She holds out a hand to Jasna, shaking her head. "No. Stay."

She kneels, beckoning the confused child to her. Jasna looks to Luka and back to her mother.

To Abby.

She steps tentatively towards her mother, head tilted to one side with concern. She moves into her mother's arms, laying her head against her shoulder as she is lifted into a protective embrace.

Abby cradles her close, gathering the strength that lingers in the bond between mother and child. Whoever she is – Abby or Danijela – Jasna was borne of her body. There is a bond there that cannot be broken by free will.

She cannot let Jasna die.

Whomever she is, she cannot take Luka's children from him. Her children. Whoever she is, these children are a part of her, and she will not let them die.

She does not know what will come of Danijela, or what will become of Abby or their future, or Joe. She does not know what will become of him. She only knows that she cannot take his children from him.

She cannot take them from herself, whomever she is.

The feeling of loving this child – this daughter – is foreign and unnerving. Loving Joe, loving Marko, is easy. She is not afraid to love a son, one who stares into her eyes with those same ambiguously colored pools of light that reflect all things wonderful onto her soul. She can love a son easily because she can love Luka like a reflex, unquestionably.

Until this moment, she did not know how to love a daughter, but now it comes to her like a muscle memory.

The ache sears in her belly.

Marko's toy rabbit trails along behind him as it is carried by one frayed ear, and suddenly, she knows the story of this rabbit as though it was whispered silently in her ear. It was Luka's as a child, and his brother's after him. She is momentarily puzzled by this and then again, it comes to her consciousness like a repressed memory. His younger brother. Not Niko. A brother Danijela has never met. Abby has never met. She feels a surge of anticipation and desperately needs to escape, to be back in bed with him, in Chicago, and to know what it is that she remembers, and why. No name comes to mind, nor why she does not know him, only that he is gone, and that it is something she does not speak of.

She is overwhelmed with a sudden want for him, and she does not know if this is Danijela or Abby that feels the magnetic pull, but she is in his arms, Jasna tucked between them for a moment before she squirms her way down and grabs her brother's hand protectively, leading him a few steps away to allow the moment to be one of privacy.

Luka holds his wife close, and she can feel the toll Vukovar has taken on his body and on his soul.

Abby once had an idyllic picture of him as he was before, when he wasn't weighted down by memories, and the fallacy of her construct is devastating. He is a mere shadow, and she wonders for the first time if this is not how it is with war, wasting the life out of all those it touches.

She longs to see the mischief in his eyes when he corners her to steal a kiss; the passion outpouring when they make love; the elation when he holds Joe.

She longs to lift his pain, and holds him closer with a resolve to love him whomever she is.

Her fingers dance along the shadow that plays on his jaw, and she implores him with her eyes. With Danijela's and Abby's eyes at once. She knows what lies beyond the green-blue-gray, and she reaches to the place in him where reason bows to pathos.

"We have to leave Vukovar."

He shakes his head, and she knows he's heard her say this a hundred times, but she begs him again, voice cracking and threatening to shatter. "We have to leave. Today."

He kisses her forehead and says nothing, and she knows there is nothing she can do to alter this aspect of history. She cannot force his hand or his resolve to stay.

She is alone in knowing, and alone in acting.

This is not a dream.

She untangles herself from his embrace and does what a mother learns to do as a reflex, paints a counterfeit smile on her face and pulls Marko into her arms, beckoning to Jasna to follow. "Come," she tells them. "Let's get dressed."

And so she follows the routine of the day, as though nothing were amiss. She knows that there will be a time, a crux, in which she must act, but for now, she pretends.


	5. Waking

She knows very little of Vukovar, but it plays in her mind like a record on a loop. Most of what she knows, he told her one night, a night that she remembers very vividly as one of those, early on, when she knew that she would love Luka differently than she'd loved anyone before. She'd been pregnant, then, and it had made her far more scared and vulnerable than even the norm, and he had woken from a nightmare and she'd been unsure, for a moment, that she could live like that, constantly running from something in his past. When he'd found her, curled in a quilt on the fire escape, he'd sat with her, and she'd cried, and so had he, and then he told her about his nightmare. About that day, when they'd died.

And he had suddenly seemed so perfectly fragile and brave at once that she'd felt something there that she couldn't quite name, and it had been the proverbial straw, and she knew then that she could live that way, because she'd rather run with him than stay still without him.

His words play relentlessly to her, and she knows that at some point, today, or tomorrow, or in a week, something will make sense, and she will know, and she will have that one split second to decide. In the meanwhile, she follows along, remembering things that she's never in her life known, wondering things she's never in her life questioned.

She is Danijela and she is Abby, but they are one in the same, here, in this place.

She loves despite the terror, because it is all she has. And she hopes it will be enough.

Jasna's eyes and Marko's smile guide her, enticing her forward to trust the moment as it is, all the while swallowing the dull ache that haunts her, to hold Joe and Luka. She understands him more now than she ever has before, and it is only when he catches her eye amidst the thick atmosphere of emotion and lethargy that she knows she is grateful.

She is Danijela and she is Abby, and she loves him fiercely.

When it comes, the moment, she is ready. Panic floods her, but she knows, instinctively, that she has this singular chance, and that she will do this, for him more than anyone else, because no matter the cost or the circumstance, she loves him.

She loves him, and that is all that matters.

He tells her he is going to the market, and the children beg to go with him, and she knows. Somewhere within, she has come to understood that she cannot bend Luka to her will, and that he will go, and it will be for the better.

If she fails, he will still live.

She kisses him gently, wondering if she will kiss him the next time as Danijela or as Abby, or if at all.

She closes her eyes for a brief moment, remembering. The touch of his lips on hers that first time as Abby, uninhibited for a fraction of a second, so lost in his eyes and enamored of his sweet smile that for that infinitesimal period, she could hope, she could want, and she reached for him and it had been wonderful.

And the touch of his lips on hers that first time as Danijela, tentative and afraid, but so sure of the man in front of her that she had no choice but to give in and offer him her first kiss, that piece of her soul, and trust him to guard it with his life, and he had, and she'd never been more sure than in that moment that she would marry him, barely more than a child, but suddenly and terrifyingly in love.

He leaves, and she breathes in the air around her, electric with what is to happen, and seizes Jasna by one hand and Marko by the other. They look at her, wide-eyed and uncertain, and she tells them that they have to go.

This is hers alone, to do with as she likes. She has the world at her mercy, and her choice is simple, because she loves him, and nothing else – not her life nor her future – is worth sentencing him to the pain she knows all too well.

Jasna's voice reminds her of her father's when he wakes in the night, vacillating between sleep and comprehension. "But Tata said…"

"It's okay." She strokes Jasna's cheek and scoops Marko into her arms, pouring the love out and into them as only a mother can.

They are hers, and they are his, and she aches with the overwhelming love she bears for these children she's known barely a few hours.

Marko cries out, wailing for his toy. Joe does the same, when they leave the apartment, never willing to go anywhere without his frog. She murmurs sweet words into his ear as she rushes, Jasna in tow, to the door.

Jasna's fingers slide from hers, and her insides turn to ice. She calls out, vainly, but Jasna is running to fetch her brother's toy, smiling at her own innocent altruism.

She calls out again, that there isn't time, but Jasna is still a child and still has not learned to heed her mother's warning.

She catches her daughter by the arm just as the whistle and rush of a mortar shell sounds.

Everything is black.

* * *

She is unbearably cold.

Her muscles shiver in the confines of her body, shaking her wholly and violently and now she wonders if this might be death.

But no, there's something there, something warm on her skin, and the warmth spreads over her like a blanket and she feels the shift.

She opens her eyes.

Familiar shades of grey-green burn into her, searching for something beyond their reach. "What's wrong?"

Her voice falters, and she makes the effort to move, so sure of the pain that will course through her that she nearly knocks him in the head when it turns out to be fluidly easy. She takes in the room around her and her breath catches in her throat.

There is a clock and a nightstand and soft mauve walls and a picture of her son.

There is a picture of Joe.

This is not Vukovar.

She's unaware of the strangled cry that comes forth from her throat. "Luka."

He holds her, and she knows.

"Luka." His name sounds perfect on her tongue, and she wants to repeat it until she's sure. Instead, she lets him rock her gently, her body shivering in his arms. "What's my name?"

He draws back, a frown marring his countenance. "What?"

"My name." It comes out a whisper. "Please."

"Abby," he murmurs. "Your name is Abby."

She feels something electric run up her spine, and she is suddenly aware that she's crying. Her fingers trace the lines of his face, desperately, and she kisses him hard. "I was her, Luka."

"Who?"

"Danijela. I was her."

He tenses. "I don't understand."

"In Vukovar. I was her, and Marko and Jasna, I saw them, and you, and…" She trails off, aware of the shock on his face, the horror in his eyes, as she rambles amid tears and she's quite certain that she must seem thoroughly delirious. "I was there, Luka."

He swallows and his head sways softly from side to side.

She repeats herself. "I was there."

"Abby –"

"Your brother." It comes to her from the blue. "Your brother gave him the rabbit, he gave Marko the rabbit, and it wasn't Niko –"

His silence is terrifying.

"Dusan." He's grey in the face now, shaking nearly as badly as she is. "I was five."

"Luka," she breathes, and it surrounds her like a cloud.

"I never told you." He's speaking almost to himself, his voice unsteady, his gaze unfocused. "You can't…"

"I was her, Luka." Now she's comforting him, hand stroking his jaw to bring his eyes back to her. "I saw it. Saw Jasna, and Marko, and you…and I tried…" She stops, suddenly exhausted. "I couldn't save them."

"Abby," he whispers.

She is Abby.

Neither know how it is possible that she knows what she does, or how she can remember Marko's face as clearly as if he were there in front of her, but she does, and somehow, she is grateful. She feels sure that this has somehow meant something, lessened his load, connected them further than either can explain. She doesn't know how, whether it was a dream or some loophole of reality, but she knows that it was real for what it was and doesn't question it.

In the night, he holds her, and she holds him, as well, and they do not dream.


	6. Author's Note

**I apologize for posting this as a separate chapter; however, I didn't want to alter expectations for the story or interrupt the flow.**

**The premise for this story is not entirely mine; rather, it is my adaptation of _The Devil's Arithmetic_ by Jane Yolen, which tells the story of a young Jewish girl who opens the door for Elijah on Passover and finds herself in a Polish shtetl (village) in the midst of the Holocaust. It's a children's book, but I highly recommend it to any adult, because it's quite a beautiful story.**

**Clearly this is not canon, nor entirely realistic. I didn't intend it as such. It's a concept piece, and that will be the end of my explanation, because the concept of the concept is a lack of explanation. Or something like that.**

**Thanks for reading!**

**- Pandorama**


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